Who says you can't win for losing? As persnickety as they may seem and for all they love to mock the state to the south as Taxachusetts, or some other sneering epithet, New Hampshirites have a tendency to vote for the guy (and they've been all guys) next door. As Paul West points out , today's New Hampshire Republican primary amounts to a home game for Mitt Romney, the prohibitive front-runner and a former governor of Tax, er, Massachusetts. Barring a for-the-ages upset, Romney should win the primary -- handily -- and join a list of favorite sons that includes Henry Cabot Lodge, Michael Dukakis, Paul Tsongas and John F. Kerry.

Mitt Romney appears on target in Tuesday's New Hampshire primary to better his disappointing second-place finish behind John McCain in 2008. With about a fifth of the vote counted, Romney sat at 35% with a lead of 11 points over Ron Paul. Jon Huntsman was in third place at 18%. The gap was such that the major networks called the race at the moment the polls closed at 8 p.m. ET. Romney received 32% of the vote in 2008, six points behind McCain. What to watch tonight: + Whether Huntsman can somehow pull ahead of Paul (it doesn't look good at the moment)

Tuesday delivered disappointment to Jon Huntsman, who stakes his presidential bid on this state and came in third in the first-in-the-nation primary. Huntsman, who for most of the year was doing so poorly in the polls that he described himself as the “margin of error” candidate, had been surging in recent days, leading to hopes among his supporters that he could take second place behind Mitt Romney, who has long had a commanding presence and lead in this state. Huntsman tried to paint his third-place finish as a win, jubilantly taking the stage at a pub with his wife, Mary Kaye, and clasping her hand and raising it in victory.

Mitt Romney rolled to a convincing victory in the New Hampshire primary, taking a broad stride toward capturing the GOP presidential nomination as the contest heads south for a pair of potentially make-or-break contests. The win Tuesday gave Romney a one-two sweep in the leadoff voting of the 2012 campaign, a first for any Republican apart from a sitting president, as the race moved to South Carolina and Florida. The conservative candidates who stand the best chance to stop him there — former Pennsylvania Sen. Rick Santorum, former House Speaker Newt Gingrich and Texas Gov. Rick Perry — were trailing far back and appeared unlikely to get a significant lift from their performances here.

Picking up where they finished hours before, the Republican presidential hopefuls sparred across two states Sunday as they vied to slow front-runner Mitt Romney ahead of New Hampshire's first-in-the-nation primary. At a pugnacious morning debate in New Hampshire, Newt Gingrich and Rick Santorum took shots at Romney's performance as Massachusetts governor and his depiction of himself as a businessman first and politician second. Former Utah Gov. Jon Huntsman Jr., smarting from a Saturday night exchange over his service as President Obama's ambassador to China, chided Romney for failing to appreciate Huntsman's sense of duty.

Jon Huntsman, showing more aggression to front-runner Mitt Romney than he has throughout much of the campaign, on Monday hit the former Massachusetts governor for saying that he liked to fire people, and for criticizing Huntsman's service as President Obama's ambassador to China. “It's become abundantly clear over the last couple days what differentiates Gov. Romney and me. I will always put my country first. It seems Gov. Romney believes in putting politics first,” Huntsman told reporters gathered in frigid Eagle Square in Concord.

With the smell of French toast and maple syrup heavy in the air, Jon Huntsman Jr. stopped by a diner here Monday and told patrons that while he was feeling some momentum, "We need some votes. " Sherry Thomas, 62, replied, "I'm a Democrat and I'm voting for you!" Thomas voted for President Obama in 2008, but is impressed by Huntsman's background as a Utah governor and ambassador to China. "He completely outshines everybody who's out there right now," said the Warner, N.H., resident.

The beautiful part of holding two debates 10 hours apart -- beside the fact that the candidate are far more alert and energetic -- is that the wounds of the previous evening, still fresh, can be addressed. Yes, folks, we've got ourselves the equivalent of a debate do-over! Former Utah Gov. Jon Huntsman was still stinging from Saturday night's debate when moderator David Gregory asked him Sunday morning which programs Huntsman would cut that would cause pain in this "age of austerity.

After a well-reviewed debate performance that included a sharp exchange with Mitt Romney, Jon Huntsman is in the drivers' seat. Literally. Huntsman was behind the wheel of his own SUV on Sunday afternoon as he left a stop at an overcrowded coffeehouse in Hampstead, where he claimed to be the candidate with the big mo' 48 hours before New Hampshire voters head to the polls. "We're moving in a direction that nobody would have predicted even a few short days ago," he told reporters in a scrum outside Bean Towne Coffee House.